Englishman sometimes living abroad

My poor site. I totally forget about it. Too much on Twitter, and on Facebook with Family. It’s hard to get back to writing on here. Has been that way for a bit. Bit of a life update. Moved country. Totally understandable really. So we’ll start again with something simple. What I’m liking right now.

Life is quite excellent. Happier than I have been for such a long time. I always think if you don’t smile for a few days then there must be something wrong. But I seem to be smiling every day. Which is rather good!

Some music. I hate that this is background music to a Bank advert, but quite grateful that I came across it. ‘Wings’ by Birdy. I will definitely be looking for a gig to go to here:

Now, if that’s embedded correctly I’ll be even more delighted as I’ve quite forgotten how to do it.

Next I saw this picture somewhere – for the life of me I cannot remember where. But I fell quite in love with it and would totally have it made into a business card

I can still not be without tea on a daily basis. And it still is Twinings Earl Grey, Chai and Lapsang Souchong. Can’t be beat.

That’s just a couple of things to attempt getting back into a habit. I’m totally going to try and remember to pop things in here. I did have Pocket integration on at some stage. But goodness knows what happened to that.

Moving house is a pain. Moving Country is another level of pain. But I managed to pull it off with some expense and not much trouble. But it’s always the little things that seem to cause the most problems. In this case I hadn’t expected it to be the Apple App Store.

My plan was simple – transfer to the UK App Store from the Irish one. Can’t be that difficult surely? The first problem was I had to cancel iTunes Match. You can’t move stores with an existing subscription. You can cancel this through iTunes. But then you have to wait for the subscription to expire before you can change. A quick bit of research and it was easy enough to just get in touch with Apple and have it cancelled immediately. That was really rather easy. The next part was where the problems crop up.

I changed App Store to the UK one, then tried to use my Irish card as the method of payment (it’s registered to a UK address now). This wasn’t accepted though so, again, I went online to do a bit of research to find out why. That’s when I discovered a big problem (for me at least). If you transfer country stores, every purchase you have made on the store is not transferred. The Apps won’t be deleted, but they won’t get updated. That is to say, you won’t see updates for them in the App Store. You have to log back in to the App Store you left and then update them from there.

What an incredible pain in the arse.

It really is better to keep two accounts. What makes it even more of a pain for me is I now need to keep an Irish Bank Account open. As Irish banks are a little challenged with money right now, that means I’ll rack up charges on the account for not using it day to day. I joked with a friend that this was an ongoing tax for leaving the country – except I wasn’t really laughing at the prospect.

I did briefly consider when I’d break even by just buying the apps again, against paying bank charges. But then remembered the Mac App Store comes into the equation – so totally not worth it.

I really liked the first season of ‘The Fall’ because it seemed different from other crime dramas. I thought Gillian Andersons character was fantastic. Sexy, yet utterly brilliant. Jamie Dornan gave a good performance as a serial killer trying to live a normal life. It was enjoyable (though not very terrifying for me). M was scared witless by the first series – but I’m not surprised.

I was really looking forward to the second season. We got to see it a little early in Ireland (absolutely shocking, I know). So I’ve waited until the UK caught up before fully expressing an opinion to friends. Well, I did say I didn’t like it – but these are some of spoiler reasons why:

How are they coming back to Belfast after only 10 days? I thought the last season ended with a nice “I’m done, I’m leaving, you’ll never catch me…muharharhar” when in fact he’d only taken his family on a little holiday to Scotland. Did I miss something?

Does it seem like Gillian Anderson’s character, Stella, has taken a little too much Valium?

When Mr Killer Himself is on his way back to Belfast on the train, and strikes up a conversation with the woman sitting with him. Who in their right mind just bats her eyelashes and smiles demurely at what is (quite frankly) a crazy psycho killer?? “Do you think I’m him?…[draws beard on e-fit]…does it look more like me? See? Do you live alone?” What woman in her right mind is not going to think “Uh oh, nutter” and get away as quickly as possible?

In the first season a lot of planning went into the murders. But in this season he seems to turn up in houses at will. Did he do a breaking and entering course while on holiday? Also he was very careful in the first season and now all but admitting it’s him to his ex-babysitter?

Finally when he broke into the house at the end. “Who are you?” says the little girl…really? REALLY? Not going to run to her mum screaming? Just becomes best friends instantly?

These are all questions I asked myself while watching it. It breaks the illusion for me. I just don’t think it’s as good as the first season.

I’m not quite sure how it started, but with Remembrance Sunday I started to think about the Grandfather I never met. Not that he died in any War, just a couple of years before I was born. My other Grandfather worked in the Shipyards at the time so very much a protected occupation. The only service he talked of was after the war and his National Service in Egypt which he hated and apparently made the lives of Officers miserable.

Anyway, I started looking at the one I never got to talk to. There is so much information now right at your fingertips. Generations down the line we’ll be saturated with information about our ancestors, but there’s something rather nice about peering into the past and peeling back the layers.

I found out he was just too young for World War One and was heading for middle-age with World War Two. So he ended up joining the Home Guard – an Anti Aircraft Battery. Apparently these guys were quite well regarded around the country. Not at all like Dad’s Army. I managed to track down my Grandfathers ‘Sign on’ papers in the National Archive. That was quite something as it was in his own hand writing. I sent it to my Dad and asked him about it. He said my Grandfathers Battery was credited with shooting down the first plane – so I had a search and he was right!

“The first kill credited to an AA battery manned by the Home Guard was that of an enemy bomber which fell to No 110 Battery on Tyneside. This had such an admirable effect on morale that Battery Commanders, subsequently had trouble in preventing men not on duty, from cluttering up the site when the sirens sounded.”

Fantastic.

I started digging a little further back through the Census. I had the names of all the Brothers, Sisters, Uncles, Aunts and have found some marvellous sites where people have already down a lot of hard work.

I didn’t realise my Great Grandparents were both Scottish, from Shetland (“Oh yeah I remember they were both Scottish”… said Dad….). I knew the name Shewan was popular in Aberdeenshire, and it originated in Shetland. But I had no idea it was that close from a generation perspective.

So I started digging a little more, and finding other wonderful sites. Then I found something which quite frankly blew my mind. Pictures of a Great Great Aunt and a Great Great (maybe Great) Uncle. Clara and Magnus. Which you can see at the top of this post.

How brilliant! I’ll dig a little deeper. It’s fascinating but a lot of work.